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Twitter out hunting for VC

twitter looking for vc fundingCould we soon see some crazy new developments from Twitter? Maybe not, but we might see some increased usage.

Twitter's cofounder Biz Stone recently said that Twitter is on the road to raising its first round of venture capital funding. Big news from a company who's traffic rate has leveled off, and is not yet profitable. Twitter has attracted about 226,000 unique visitors in May, compare that to 94,000 in April, but down from 397,000 in February. Still not bad for a company that only launched last winter. Twitter is extremely focused on growing their network of users before making money, and they really don't have an evident business model as of yet.

As Stefanie Olsen mentioned, could Twitter be snapped up by Google before funding goes through, as Blogger was?

Teenie Bopper social network site Piczo gets a larger vocabulary

piczo goes internationalOne thing that tends to take a while in the Web 2.0 market is the expansion to non-English speaking markets. Even Google is guilty of waiting a while to open up services for non-English speaking residents of the world.

Piczo, the social network that specializes in the teen market, has finally expanded to include other languages. The second place superstar in the social space for teens now has international versions for users in Germany, France and Spain.

It's a move that hasn't come soon enough for the over 1.2 million users in Germany alone. Piczo's current user base is approx. 25 million users worldwide.

[via webware]

Why all the social web angst? Readers Sound Off

Dig dirtIs there a reason members of social communities are so mean to everyone? All the wikipundits (those who think wikipedia is the library of congress or something) are so disparaging, so unfathomably harsh, and for what? Ruthless users of social news sites almost make me want to put non-labeled generic cleaning products in their coffee to prove a point, but not quite. I really don't get it, the social-sharable web culture is very generous, helpful, and interesting at times. At other times, not so much.

Why all the trolling, the war-mongering with no reserve, no calm, cool, and no collected? Seriously, what is the deal? Are social networks just prime communities for unmoderated smack talk and trashing less-educated users? Tell us why you think a hot social news community can be such a dangerous place to get your comments on, especially for the less-savvy.

Roger Clarke's "Ethics and the Internet" is an interesting read on the topic if you are interested, and though a bit dated it has some interesting tidbits to offer on the subject.

(thanks to David for the assist)

Netscape.com surpasses 50,000 members

Netscape's 50,000th memberFeisty young social news site Netscape.com, raised from the ashes of the old Netscape portal about 10 weeks ago, gained its 50,000th member today. (Disclosure: Download Squad and Netscape.com are both AOL properties, and I'm one of Netscape's Navigators.) The 50,000th member goes by the name of zvyozd, which frankly sounds like an alias to me. Though some people would argue that arbitrary milestones like this are meaningless, I do love seeing all those zeros lined up. My back-of-the-envelope calculations say that equates to about 5,000 new members per week (duh), and more than 700 per day. Congrats C.K., Jason, zvyozd, and all of the hard-working Netscape developers, anchors, navigators, and members. In case you're into such things, you can watch the new members, stories, votes, and comments roll in on the Netscape Tracker.

Blogging about someone's app? Tag it with 'freedbacking'

The term certainly doesn't roll off the tongue as well as 'feedback', but in this case, that's an advantage. 'Freedbacking', a melding of 'free' and 'feedback', is a new tag proposed by Lockergnome's Chris Pirillo that bloggers can use to let developers know their apps are being talked about. The idea is that by using a 100% made-up term that search engines have never heard of, users who have something (ideally constructive) to say can get their message to developers much more easily. While most companies and developers already have feedback systems established such as forums and email, a public discourse through blogging and the use of a specialized tag brings the discussion to a whole new level.

At least that's the idea. The new tag, while already being put to use, is still in its infancy, so time will tell as to how widely accepted it becomes and how much value the system offers. I, for one, am excited at the possibility of opening the door between developers and their users just a little bit wider.

[via Wired]

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